“Now, proposed state regulations on gun manufacturers has [sic] Beretta considering relocation of its business to another state,” the release read, which is why “Council Member Helena Brown reached out to Beretta General Counsel Jeff Reh and extended a formal invitation to Beretta to consider moving its manufacturing facility to Houston’s District A.”

It’s unclear why Brown would approach the company’s general counsel about the move.

Then Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst decided to jump on the PR bandwagon last Friday. “I am not going to make any bones about it,” Dewhurst wrote. “I want to bring Beretta USA right here to Texas.”

His pitch, though similar to Brown’s by mentioning Texas’s low taxes, sounded a lot like a campaign speech. “In Texas, my job is to create jobs,” Dewhurst wrote. “I work in stride with state leaders who all want to deliver the framework for prosperity that allows for employers and employees to thrive.”

Dewhurst, of course, lost last year’s bruising Republican primary for U.S. Senate to emerging punchline Ted Cruz.

CM Brown inviting Beretta to move to District A is weird because her district in Northwest Houston is—while mixed-use like all of un-zoned Houston—a dense residential area with a largely settled and aging population. Beretta USA currently manufactures in Accokeek, Maryland, a town of 10,000, and employs about 300 people.

But Lt. Gov. Dewhurst inviting Beretta USA to Texas is weird because, well, everybody’s already done it. The Baltimore Sun noted on March 9 that at least seven other states have courted Maryland’s gun manufacturers, including “the governor of Texas, West Virginia’s House speaker and an Illinois congressman.”